Thurbrand the Hold

Perhaps based in Holderness and East Yorkshire, Thurbrand was recorded as the killer of Uhtred the Bold, Earl of Northumbria.

The killing appears to have been part of the war between Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great against the English king Æthelred the Unready, Uhtred being the latter's chief Northumbrian supporter.

The Historia Regum and Chronicle of John of Worcester say that Thurbrand was a "Danish nobleman" (nobilo et Danico viro)[1] His title, that of "Hold", derives from an office said by the Norðleoda laga ("Law of the North People") to have been equal in wergild to a royal high-reeve, above a thegn but below an ealdorman.

[6] According to the late-11th- or early-12th-century Durham tract called De obsessione Dunelmi, Thurbrand was the "leading enemy" of Styr son of Ulf.

[8] De Obsessionee says that the Earl of the Northumbrians Uhtred the Bold married Styr's daughter Sige on the condition that he would kill Thurbrand, becoming "a kind of contract killer" [Fletcher].

This identity, however, is far from secure, an alleged weak point being that the early spellings of Wighill (e.g. Wichele) do not resemble De Obsessione's Wiheal very closely.

Carl was known to have had four sons; two of them, Cnut and Sumarlithr, are known definitely by name, and the eldest is thought to have been Thurbrand of Settrington, whose land was taken by Berengar de Tosny after the Norman conquest of Northumbria.

[21] The multi-generational feud allegedly behind all these killings are the subject of Richard A. Fletcher's Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England, published in 2002 by Penguin Books.